Household structures in Albania in the early 20th century

This article attempts to shed light on household structures in Albania based on the census of 1918. Quantitative data enable the investigation of patterns of household formation and marriage in a region where such research previously has been missing. The results confirm eastern European marriage patterns for women but not for men in Albania. Northern Albania lies in the core zone of the Balkan patriarchy and joint family households have prevailed in rural Albania, despite a tendency toward frequent divisions of households among brothers. Most important, there existed a great variety of types of households in different villages in Albania in 1918.     

Household structures in Albania in the early 20th century

This article attempts to shed light on household structures in Albania based on the census of 1918. Quantitative data enable the investigation of patterns of household formation and marriage in a region where such research previously has been missing. The results confirm eastern European marriage patterns for women but not for men in Albania. Northern Albania lies in the core zone of the Balkan patriarchy and joint family households have prevailed in rural Albania, despite a tendency toward frequent divisions of households among brothers. Most important, there existed a great variety of types of households in different villages in Albania in 1918.     

Introduction: Household and family contexts in the Balkans

The structural study of the Balkan family began in the United States in the 1940s, producing several generations of scholars. Such scholarly continuity is much more recent on the European continent. Findings to date suggest the Balkan pattern of male equal partible inheritance could lead to four distinctive household formation patterns. But though it seems that the inheritance system played a key role, it was only in combination with additional elements that a distinctive pattern evolved. These additional elements were neolocality or patrivirilocality; environmental factors (abundance or scarcity of land, remote mountainous regions, islands); economic factors such as forms of pastoralism, mixed production or fishing; and agnatic kinship as opposed to community ties. Future research will have to continue to address the question of Balkan familial diversity, as well as how the Balkans compare to the rest of Europe with respect to crucial familial characteristics.     

Introduction: Household and family contexts in the Balkans

The structural study of the Balkan family began in the United States in the 1940s, producing several generations of scholars. Such scholarly continuity is much more recent on the European continent. Findings to date suggest the Balkan pattern of male equal partible inheritance could lead to four distinctive household formation patterns. But though it seems that the inheritance system played a key role, it was only in combination with additional elements that a distinctive pattern evolved. These additional elements were neolocality or patrivirilocality; environmental factors (abundance or scarcity of land, remote mountainous regions, islands); economic factors such as forms of pastoralism, mixed production or fishing; and agnatic kinship as opposed to community ties. Future research will have to continue to address the question of Balkan familial diversity, as well as how the Balkans compare to the rest of Europe with respect to crucial familial characteristics.     

Family contexts: The Balkans in European comparison

No satisfactory conclusions can be drawn with respect to joint families and nuclear families from an analysis of their frequency distributions. Joint families that practice ancestor worship and blood vengeance, for example, are to be classified differently for purposes of generalization than joint families in which these practices are absent. In the entire Balkan area penetration by institutions—the Church, the state or the feudal lord—remained extremely weak over the course of centuries. Correspondingly, the emergence here of familial social forms such as joint family households and kinship groups was stronger. The Balkan area is not a region characterized by a single form of family composition. Of the highly diverse patterns to be found here, particular significance can be attributed to the pattern in the western mountainous regions—producing the well-known zadruga—because of its very long history, the extent to which it was transmitted to other regions and, above all, because of its uniqueness on the European continent. When the Balkans are viewed in a European comparison, it is impossible to maintain a division of the continent into two or four discrete regions each displaying different forms of family composition.     

The consumption of patriarchy: commodification to facilitation and reification

There is an abundance of research from cultural, critical and feminist criminology that has recognized media as a vehicle to propagate various forms of gender inequality and violence against women. Likewise, there has been extensive research on how childhood products and toys replicate the patriarchal construction of gender. However, these bodies of research have been relatively silent on how the commodification of culture is consumed and reified by the very population it oppresses (i.e. women). Here, we argue that violence against women is commodified and eagerly consumed in an age of neo-liberalism, legitimizing the patriarchal power structures that subordinate women. Our goal is to begin a discussion of female consumption of the commodification that gives consent and facilitates the patriarchal perpetual power system. Using examples from media and the consumer market, we hope to begin a broader discussion of how patriarchy, gender roles and inequality are reinforced through everyday banal consumption by both sexes. However, this banal consumption by females not only lends to the legitimization of the heteronormative patriarchal status quo but also makes them active participants in the continuation of inequality and power structures inherent within this patriarchal society.     

Ideological dimensions of the “Balkan Family Pattern” in the first half of the 20th century

This article deals with family ideology and family ritual processes in the Central part of the Balkans, in the mountainous part of the Bulgarian–Serbian border areas, during the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Celebration rituals, dedicated to the patron saints of family-kin households (Serbian slava and Bulgarian sluzhba), have been described as an “ideology of patriarchalism” in ethnological and historical literature, based on the cult of predecessors. Ethnographical research in this region has shown the prominent social functions of the ritual cycle that built cohesion in the family-kin community, rather than archaism. Based on historical and ethnological data, and on ethnographic fieldwork in Western Bulgaria and Eastern Serbia, this contribution shows how the Orthodox cycle of celebrations and rituals was practiced in a family-kin environment during the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis focuses on how family rituals built family ideology, which kept its integrative functions even during the decades of socialism.     

Woman abuse in university and college dating relationships: The contribution of the ideology of familial patriarchy

Several theorists contend that male university/college students who physically, sexually, and psychologically abuse their female dating partners are more likely than men who are not abusive to adhere to the ideology of familial patriarchy. These scholars also argue that men who hold familial patriarchal attitudes and beliefs, and who are supported by their male peers, are most likely to victimize their dating partners. This research provides quantitative data from a national representative sample of Canadian male undergraduate students that support these hypotheses. This study was sponsored by a grant from the family Violence Prevention Division, Health and Welfare Canada The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Health and Welfare Canada.     

Family (Law) Assemblages: New Modes of Being (Legal)

This article advances a new model for family law to address emerging non‐conventional family formations, particularly between parents and children. We contend that the conventional model of kinship categories as static, predefined statuses should be replaced with a model whereby the state accommodates kinship categories the law users themselves produce within their fluid and nomadic family assemblages and that they actively revise when negotiating state recognition. We claim that this model would better reflect and govern the emerging kinship system. We corroborate this by drawing on insights from family research that takes issue with the fragmentation of kinship, particularly the fragmentation of motherhood. We then elaborate on a conception of state recognition as the capacity to trace connections and identify normative frameworks, one that valorizes the self‐organizing force of social practices but at the same time holds onto the filtering role of the state.     

The patriarchy index: a comparative study of power relations across historical Europe

This article stands at the confluence of three streams of historical social science analysis: the sociological study of power relations within the family, the regional demography of historical Europe, and the study of spatial patterning of historical family forms in Europe. It is a first exercise in the design and application of a new ‘master variable’ for cross-cultural studies of family organization and relations. This indexed composite measure, which the authors call the Index of Patriarchy, incorporates a range of variables related to familial behaviour, including nuptiality and age at marriage, living arrangements, post-marital residence, power relations within domestic groups, the position of the aged, and the sex of the offspring. The index combines all these items, with each being given equal weight in the calculation of the final score, which represents the varying degrees of sex- and age-related social inequality (‘patriarchal bias’) in different societal and familial settings. In order to explore the comparative advantages of the index, the authors use information from census and census-like microdata for 91 regions of historical Europe covering more than 700,000 individuals living in 143,000 domestic groups, from the Atlantic to the Urals. The index allows the authors to identify regions with different degrees of patriarchy within a single country, across the regions of a single country, or across and within many broader zones of historical Europe. The unprecedented patterning of the many elements of power relations and agency contained in the index generates new ways of accounting for both the geographies and the histories of family organization across the European landmass.     

Corruption,bribery and patriarchy in Tanzania

This is an ethnography of the political culture of Tanzania as compared to the political culture of the United States. Endemic and harmful corruption among the political leadership of Tanzania and the United States alike stems from widespread popular equation of order with patriarchy, made worse by extending the logic of patriarchy to belief that social order and welfare rest on the strength of the nation state. The Tanzanian war on corruption and ensuing shutdown of the University of Dar es Salaam during the first half of 1990 affirm the radical feminist premise that the models of legitimacy we apply in the privacy of our families are identical to and inseparable from the models of legitimacy employeed domestically and internationally by our political leaders. Corruption and other violence are more directly expressed in Tanzania and more indirectly expressed by Americans who as a consequence are more enslaved to corruption and violence than Tanzanians. The contrast in Tanzanian and U.S. political cultures and the nature of patriarchy itself leads to a set of paradoxes about achieving freedom from corruption through exercise of patriarchal state power—as that children who are the ultimate victims of corruption are at once most blamed by adults, more responsive to change than adults, and unable to change as long as they remain the subjects of patriarchal discipline. Bribery is not necessarily a part of the problem of corruption but is a part of the solution. Freedom from corruption basically requires democratic accountability. Tanzanians and Americans are linked symbiotically: neither people can free themselves from corruption without before the other. There is no logical starting point for a patriarchal approach to freeing people from corruption. On the other hand radically effective emancipation from corruption is occurring across Tanzania and the United States.     

Street politics in Damascus: Kinship and other social categories as bases of political action, 1830–1841

The study examines popular politics in Damascus during the 1830s with a focus on kinship and other social categories that served as bases for political action. It is based on a close reading of one text, an anonymous Arabic chronicle known as ‘Historical Memoirs’ (Mudhakkirāt tārīkhiyya), which is analysed as a repertoire of contemporary social and political concepts. This analysis reveals an ideology of ‘localist’ resistance against the centralising state and its ‘loyalist’ allies in Damascus. Kinship played an important role in this struggle on the social plane (e.g. by using family networks for political ends) as well as on the cultural plane (e.g. through the use of kinship metaphors or through criticism of kinship ties in politics). It is concluded that the function of kinship in Damascene politics can only be understood in the context of other social categories such as factionalism, religious affiliation, class and ethnicity.     

One of the family: Domestic service in early modern Japan

This study investigates the effect of domestic service upon social practice and asks if domestic service led to self-affirmation and individualistic behavior in early modern Japan. It begins by describing various employees classified as domestic servants. Next the role of the servant as a member of the employer's family shows fluid kinship relations that resulted in changes in the family system and family practice. Contemporary theater is used to address some of the conflicting issues that these changes offered as challenges to patriarchal authority and how society reacted to these changes.     

Family and business among master artisans and entrepreneurs

This article considers the relationship between family and business among economically successful artisans who were on the way to attaining the status of industrial bourgeoisie. For 19th-century master artisans as well as for entrepreneurs, the family was an important means of economic success. The connection between family and business, however, manifested itself in various ways. Cross-sectional household structures show two distinct patterns, which might be interpreted as “traditional” and “modern” family forms. Yet, the study of family biographies and of intergenerational succession casts doubt upon dichotomous perspectives and points toward complex relations between family strategies, kinship networks, and the guilds.     

Family and business among master artisans and entrepreneurs: The case of 19th-century Vienna

This article considers the relationship between family and business among economically successful artisans who were on the way to attaining the status of industrial bourgeoisie. For 19th-century master artisans as well as for entrepreneurs, the family was an important means of economic success. The connection between family and business, however, manifested itself in various ways. Cross-sectional household structures show two distinct patterns, which might be interpreted as “traditional” and “modern” family forms. Yet, the study of family biographies and of intergenerational succession casts doubt upon dichotomous perspectives and points toward complex relations between family strategies, kinship networks, and the guilds.     

Patriarchal ideology and wife-assault: A meta-analytic review

Using the framework of patriarchal theory, the present meta-analytic review examined the predicted relation between wife assault and the maintenance of a patriarchal ideology. This relationship was evaluated using three measures of patriarchal ideology: (1) attitudes toward violence, (2) gender attitudes, and (3) gender schemas. Overall, assaultive husbands reported more positive attitudes toward marital violence and lower scores on masculine and feminine gender schema scales than nonassaultive husbands. Methodological factors accounted for the significant heterogeneity among the gender attitude effect estimates for men. A nonsignificant average effect in the males' gender attitude emerged in studies which used husbands' self-report data and case-control comparison groups. In contrast to men, assaulted wives held more feminine gender schema and tended to exhibit more liberal gender attitudes than nonassaulted wives across studies. These meta-analytic findings offer limited support for the ideological component of the patriarchal theory of wife assault and are discussed with respect to their theoretical and methodological implications.     

Power and inheritance: Male domination,property, and family in eastern Europe, 1500–1900

A widespread inheritance pattern in eastern and southeastern Europe was based on equally partible male inheritance and excluded women from inheritance and dowry. The western transition zone to the other predominant European inheritance systems coincided with the Hajnal line, which divides the distribution of European marriage patterns in historical times. New evidence is added to the historical depth of the cultural–historical transition zone already postulated by Mitterauer. Since the early Middle Ages, this zone also marked the border region of two basic European agrarian systems: the western Grundherrschafts system, which led to the intervention of landlords into inheritance patterns and family structures of the serfs and the non-interventionist tributary systems, which left inheritance practices based on customary laws untouched until the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The above-mentioned inheritance pattern, which was also widespread in Asia, allocated a huge amount of power to the agnatic core of the family and was part of a patriarchal system shaped by patrilineality, patrilocality, low age at marriage, complex family forms, and fragmentation of the soil when demographic transition set in.     

Power and inheritance

A widespread inheritance pattern in eastern and southeastern Europe was based on equally partible male inheritance and excluded women from inheritance and dowry. The western transition zone to the other predominant European inheritance systems coincided with the Hajnal line, which divides the distribution of European marriage patterns in historical times. New evidence is added to the historical depth of the cultural–historical transition zone already postulated by Mitterauer. Since the early Middle Ages, this zone also marked the border region of two basic European agrarian systems: the western Grundherrschafts system, which led to the intervention of landlords into inheritance patterns and family structures of the serfs and the non-interventionist tributary systems, which left inheritance practices based on customary laws untouched until the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The above-mentioned inheritance pattern, which was also widespread in Asia, allocated a huge amount of power to the agnatic core of the family and was part of a patriarchal system shaped by patrilineality, patrilocality, low age at marriage, complex family forms, and fragmentation of the soil when demographic transition set in.     

Revisiting Patriarchy: Its Conceptualization and Operationalization in Criminology

In recent decades, patriarchy has increasingly been posited as an explanation for gender differences in crime and victimization. While researchers frequently allude to the “patriarchal structure of society” or to “male domination” when discussing their theoretical perspective or findings, rarely do they articulate their conceptualization of the term. As a result, patriarchy has been used as an explanatory wild card that lacks specificity and is purported to both increase and decrease female crime and delinquency. In this paper we examine the conceptualization of patriarchy in criminological theory and research, discuss why the failure to clearly conceptualize this construct is problematic, and offer potential avenues for operationalizing patriarchy with the goal of facilitating future research on gender differences in crime.

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